As a G2 driver, Warren Ferns wasn’t supposed to have consumed any alcohol when he got behind the wheel with three friends on Labour Day Monday in 2016.

Now the young man sits in a downtown courtroom with his friend dead and his future in limbo — he faces years in a federal prison if Superior Court Justice Jane Kelly finds him guilty of impaired driving causing death and dangerous driving causing death.

The death of his friend, Akhil Sankeshwar.

Sankeshwar was 28 and had moved here from India three years earlier to study hospitality management at Lambton College. Described as jolly and sweet, he was working as night manager at the Courtyard Suites in Markham and Facebook photos show him beaming in front of countless Toronto landmarks.

His mom was hoping he would return to Mumbai soon. But Sankeshwar would never come home again.

It’s a story repeated so many times on our roads — a suspected drunk driver, a fatal crash — and even after all the warnings and all the cautionary tales, nothing seems to change.

At the judge alone trial, Ferns has pleaded not guilty. His lawyer is challenging the blood alcohol readings taken at the hospital and insists his client wasn’t impaired by alcohol at all. That it was all a tragic accident.

And not a criminal act that should be punished by law.

Ferns was 24 and working as a delivery driver at Marigold Indian Bistro. After his shift ended at 11:30 p.m., he and three friends went to Crocodile Rock in the entertainment district.

Court heard they each had two beers and at least one shot, maybe two, before they left for home in Ferns’ Mazda — despite Ferns, as a novice driver, not being legally allowed to drive after consuming any alcohol.

One of the four, Eric Hovland, would testify that Ferns showed no sign of impairment. They were all talking and listening to the radio, heading north on winding Mt. Pleasant Rd. near Roxborough Dr..

It was about 2:20 a.m. The speed limit had just changed from 50 to 60 km/h.

A collision reconstructionist said Ferns was driving at least 76 km/h. Hovland recalled their car suddenly jerked to the right and then jerked to the left. The Mazda then slid an estimated 40 to 50 metres before slamming into a hydro pole.

Sankeshwar, seated in the back on the driver’s side, was the only one of the four who couldn’t get out of the smashed car. He would die soon after.

“While impaired to some degree by alcohol, Mr. Ferns lost control of the car,” Crown attorney Sean Doyle said in his closing argument.

“Alcohol isn’t a coincidence here.”

Blood taken from Ferns at the hospital put his blood alcohol level at the time of the crash at between 103 and 123 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres, well over the legal limit of 80.

At 6 a.m. — almost four hours after the fatal collision — the driver registered 68 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood on a breathalyzer.

Doyle dismissed suggestions that Ferns wasn’t impaired because he showed no obvious signs of intoxication such as glassy eyes or weaving across lanes.

Impairment, he said, is also the inability to “appreciate speed and distance and react to unexpected stimuli.”

A sober driver would have been able to negotiate the Mt. Pleasant curves, not swerve and then overcorrect, the prosecutor said, insisting Ferns be found guilty on both counts.

“It’s a tragedy all around,” lawyer Darren Sederoff said in urging the judge to acquit Ferns.

He maintained Ferns showed no signs of alcohol impairment and called his client’s speeding “not excessive,” and his driving not a “marked departure” that would prove dangerous driving causing death.

“It was his friend. It happened in a split second,” the lawyer explained outside the courtroom.

“He was under the legal limit from our perspective at the material time. They’re trying to make an example that any amount of alcohol at the time of an accident can result in a penitentiary sentence.”

Kelly is expected to release her judgment next month.

“These cases are the most difficult,” she said.

Until then, Ferns remains free on bail.

And Sankeshwar’s family awaits word in India, where they grieve the son who was only supposed to go to Toronto for a few years and then come home to them.